“No, to the unauthorized use of the hotel’s name by an intermediary channel”: analyzing the first point in the HOTREC manifesto

18 Jan “No, to the unauthorized use of the hotel’s name by an intermediary channel”: analyzing the first point in the HOTREC manifesto

In May 2012, HOTREC (the European Trade Association of Hotels, Restaurants & Cafes) published on the Internet a 19 point manifesto listing the policies hotel managers should adopt against OTAs (Online Travel Agencies &ndash; i.e. large scale travel agencies such as Expedia and Booking). To give an idea of the significance of this association, just consider that it combines all of the main national associations, including our own Federalberghi and FIPE.

The points, which will be published on a bi-weekly basis, essentially recover the values expressed in the Nozio Statement of Values, and are applied to hotel web marketing projects developed.

In this article we’ll focus on the first point in the manifesto:

1. “No, to the unauthorized use of the hotel’s name by an intermediary channel” (Expedia, Booking, etc.), in promotional activities on search engines, on social networks and on all other online advertising platforms.Hotel managers, forbid OTAs from exploiting your brand to promote their portal!

Simply put, OTAs use the good name of your establishment to promote their portal: they intercept end consumers (travelers), and then have you pay a commission for bookings!

A few solutions to prevent this sort of misbehavior?

– make use of pay per click campaigns with Google Adwords;
– prohibit OTAs from exploiting your brand to promote their portal, based on the contractual conditions between individual hoteliers and online intermediation agencies.

What do you think about this? Do you think it’s proper for a company you’re working with to take advantage of your name to promote themselves on the Internet? Would you like to discuss this issue with our consultants to find out more?
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